Taiwan police nab bullet maker in Chen shooting

TAIPEI - Taiwan police have arrested the man who made the bullets used in the election-eve shooting of President Chen Shui-bian in March, the island's top police investigator said on Monday.

The arrest represents the biggest breakthrough to date in the investigation into the March 19 shooting, which lightly wounded Chen and Vice-President Annette Lu while they were campaigning in an open-top jeep in the southern city of Tainan.

Chen won a second four-year term by a razor-thin margin the next day, and opposition parties have raised suspicions the attack might have been staged for sympathy votes.

"We are very, very sure that this man is the one who manufactured the bullets used in the shooting of the president and vice president," Criminal Investigation Bureau commissioner Hou Yu-ih said of the main suspect.

Hou told a news conference the suspect, identified only by his surname Tang, had been caught because of the unusual structure of the homemade ammunition used in the shooting, as well as distinctive tool and machine marks.

He did not disclose how many accomplices Tang had in his manufacturing operation or how many of them have been detained.

"According to our understanding, he has no political colours. He is simply an arms maker in the Tainan area," Hou said.

Police have identified no suspects for the attack, but Hou said the police are questioning Tang to find who bought bullets and homemade weapons from him.

"We now have the upstream supplier, and we need to work our way downstream," he said.

Police have had no luck finding a man in his 30s or 40s standing in the "hot zone" from where two shots are believed to have been fired from a homemade gun. The man's features cannot be clearly made out in television footage of the event.

Private handguns are illegal in Taiwan, but there is a thriving underground trade in modified air rifles and pistols that fire real bullets.

Investigators said Tang had used ordinary caps used in toy cap guns as primers in the bullet casings, and his initial batches of bullets were made from materials such as melted lead weights on fishing lures.

- REUTERS